Sleeping in Fier

I suppose my little sojourn to the south of the country and the Adriatic coast warrants comment as well.  Since I had suddenly turned into an urbane, social-climbing Tiranite, it was high time to get me out into the countryside and give me some plausible claim at having seen all of Albania.  So what followed was a whirlwind trip to the south, slip into Greece for a couple of stamps and to cross off the final Balkan country on my list, and a glimpse of Lake Prespa for the sake of speaking authoritatively about it at dinner parties in the future.  Which I still plan on doing.

So for a second let’s back it up to the point where I dragged my carcass out of bed one rainy morning after a thrilling game of three-way-beer pong and a dance off with a large Albanian girl at one of the local discotheques.  Clearly this was a day for coffee and pizza with prosciutto and arugula but it was not to be. We ran to the sidewalk that happened to be the meeting point for the buses to Berat, and I settled into my book on the Balkans, titled The Balkans, by Mark Mazower.  I’m only mentioning this because I severely regret trading it with a British guy in Georgia* and if anyone has this book I’d appreciate it if you post it to me.   I got through the first chapter before the bus finally filled up and we were off towards Berat, where it was surprisingly sunny and preferable to Tirana. 

Berat has a pretty good claim on being the nicest city in Albania.  It has a lot of history and stuff, and there is a fortress where 100 or so people still live.  We checked out the fortress c/o two personal guides.  A little girl and her brother showed us around and told us all about the fortress and the history of the area.   Probably the highlight was when an old crone emerged from her house and started hollering about whatever it is 95-year-old Albanian women don’t like young people doing.  The littl’un turned to us and indicated that her great aunt was “in a mood” and that we should tread lightly.  But in all seriousness, this young lady, at the age of 7, will probably lead Albanian into the EU one day she was so confident and well-spoken.  Once we had our fill of fortresses and the requisite pizza, we then furgoned to Fier, the centre of the Albanian oil industry, and stayed with a Fulbright-er, whose research activity was dental anthropology.  We looked at a lot of teeth over dinner.  

*Spoiler alert! I make it to Georgia.